Kay Bailey Hutchison’s rationale for the Trump administration’s pre-emptive withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty weighs heavily on Russia’s deployment of a new generation of missiles in violation of the 30-year-old pact.

For more than half a century, when the superpowers exchanged such accusations, they would return to the negotiating table and try to resolve the dispute. When Western intelligence discovered in the 1980s that the Soviets were building a giant radar in Siberia not allowed under the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the George H.W. Bush administration resorted to diplomacy and persuaded the Kremlin not to build it, keeping the regulation of strategic weapons stable.

Russia, under Vladimir V. Putin, has pushed ahead with formidable offensive weapons. President Trump seems to be determined for a shutdown of arms control altogether. History will frown on this mistake, and so will the future.

Strobe TalbottWashingtonThe writer was deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration.